The Children of Hare Hill (2 page)

Chapter 3

Before they set off to find the second wooden hare, Charlotte opened her backpack and searched inside.

"What are you doing?" Alison asked.

Charlotte didn't answer, but kept digging until she found what she was looking for. "There it is," she said, and pulled out a tatty, folded sheet of paper in one hand and a pair of red dice in the other.

"What's that?" Ben asked, running over to look at the piece of paper as Charlotte unfolded it.

As soon as Alison saw it, she knew what it was. It was a map of Hare Hill, hand-drawn to no scale whatsoever, showing the footpaths, the walled garden, the bird-watching hut, the greenhouse, and, of course, the approximate locations of the wooden hares, all numbered from one to thirteen. The map had been drawn by her husband, their father; it was the last map he drew, the one they never got the chance to take on an adventure.

Seeing the map was like receiving a message from beyond the grave. In her mind, she was taken back in time to the day he drew the map, a moment full of anticipation of fun-filled times ahead with their children, which was destined to turn to tragedy within a matter of hours. Michael had jumped out of bed early that day, eager to draw the map and set up his usual set of puzzles and challenges at each wooden hare. He always wanted to do this before Charlotte and Ben woke up—the temptation to give them a preview of the adventure ahead of them was too great if they were awake. After they had lost their father, they found the map, but his notepad containing the details of the challenges had been lost forever. She knew that Charlotte had kept the map, but she didn't realise she had kept it so close to her heart all this time.

"It's Daddy's last map," Charlotte told Ben, then turned to her mother. "Can we follow it like we used to with Daddy? Please?"

Alison smiled. "Of course we can." 

"What do we do?" Ben asked. "I can't remember."

"We take turns to roll the dice," Charlotte said. "Then we go to the hare with that number. Once we've been to all twelve, we then go to number thirteen."

They all looked at the map. The thirteenth wooden hare was bigger than all the others, both in real life and in its representation on the map. It was at the top of a hill by a pond, and it always marked the finishing line of their adventures.

"I want to roll the dice!" Ben shouted.

"No," said Charlotte. "I want to roll the dice first!"

Ben made a grab for the dice in Charlotte's hand, but she turned away and within seconds they had tumbled over onto the ground, each trying to wrestle the dice free.

"Stop it!" Alison shouted. Her children stopped rolling in the dusty gravel and got to their feet. They gripped one dice each tightly in their hands.

"What would your daddy say right now? You never used to fight like this when he was here! What is your problem?"

Charlotte and Ben sniffed, then began to cry, and Alison's anger melted away in an instant. She brushed the dust from their clothes, relieved that they had picked up no cuts or scrapes during their tussle. She hugged them both and said, "Why don't you roll a dice each?"

They looked at each other and nodded. Alison opened the picnic bag and got out two plastic cups, remembering that is how they would roll the dice on the visits with their father. Alison and Michael had quickly tired of raking through bushes looking for dice their children regularly lost as they hit a rock and pinged off into the undergrowth.

Charlotte and Ben each held a hand over the top of their cup and shook it, then looked inside.

"I've got a six!" Ben exclaimed.

"I've got a six too," said Charlotte.

Alison asked them, "So what do six and six make?"

"Twelve!" they announced in unison.

"That's right," Alison said. "Okay, Charlotte, where is hare number twelve?"

Charlotte looked at the map. "It's the one at the gate to the secret garden."

"Okay," Alison said, looking her children in the eye, "are you ready to go on an adventure?"

Chapter 4

The secret garden wasn't secret at all; it was just the name their family had given to the walled garden, which is the centrepiece of the park. Alison, Charlotte, and Ben looked at the beautifully-manicured lawn through the gate.

"Are we going to have our picnic in there?" Ben asked.

"Yes," Alison said, "but not yet. It's a little bit early. We'll take Daddy to see all the hares first, then come back here for our picnic."

They turned to see wooden hare number twelve, standing next to the gate.

"Are you going to leave some of Daddy's ashes here, Mummy?" Charlotte asked.

"Yes, but would you like to do it?"

Charlotte was shocked. She hadn't thought about even carrying her father's ashes, never mind scattering them. But she resisted her immediate urge to recoil and refuse her mother's offer. Her face must have given away the conflict she was feeling because Alison said, "Don't worry, Charlotte. I'll help you."

Charlotte looked at her mother, then at the urn that contained her father's ashes. "It's important to say goodbye to him the right way, isn't it?" Alison added.

Charlotte nodded and stood next to the wooden hare as her mother removed the lid from the urn. They held it and very carefully shook some of the ashes onto the ground at the wooden hare's feet.

"There," Alison said. "That wasn't difficult, was it?"

Charlotte shook her head as she stared at the pile of ashes. "Thank you, Mummy." Then after a second, she said, "Bye bye, Daddy."

Ben had been standing in silence next to Alison the whole time, but he made a grab for the urn when she put the lid back on and tried to put it in her shoulder bag.

"Hey!" she shouted, her voice cracking with the fear of losing him again as she gripped the urn with all her might. "What are you doing, Ben?"

"I want to do it! Why does she get to say goodbye to Daddy and I don't?"

Alison knelt down with her little boy and gave him a huge hug, despite his protests. Slowly, his wriggling turned into shaking sobs.

"It's okay, Ben," Alison said. "I know it's tough on all of us, but we all get to say goodbye to him."

"It's hard to remember him," Ben sobbed. "I couldn't remember what he looked like until we looked at the photos."

Alison hugged him tighter and said, "Come on, let's move on. You can scatter his ashes at the next hare. Okay?"

"Okay, Mummy," Ben said.

"Now," Alison said as she got to her feet, "can you both roll your dice?"

Charlotte and Ben both got their dice and rolled them in their plastic cups.

"Six again!" said Ben.

"Five!" said Charlotte.

"And what does six plus five make?" Alison asked.

"Eleven!" they both shouted.

Charlotte got out the map and they all looked for hare number eleven.

"There it is!" Ben said, pointing on the map. It was just along the path and round the trees from number twelve.

Charlotte looked up and pointed down the path. "It's this way. Let's go!"

She put the map in her backpack and grabbed her mother's hand in her left and her little brother's hand in her right. Alison tried to remember the last time her children had held each other's hands, but couldn't.

They followed the path through the trees and round a flower bed blooming with daffodils. They didn't have far to walk before they found hare number eleven. It was standing at a crossroads in the path. Ahead of them, the path led up the hill to Pistol Pond. The thirteenth hare was waiting for them there, but they would have to find all the others first.

Alison looked all around before she took the urn out of her shoulder bag.

"What are you looking for, Mummy?" Charlotte asked.

"I'm just checking that there's no one else around. I don't want anyone to see us."

"Why?"

"Because I don't know whether we're allowed to do this or not."

Charlotte and Ben shot questioning glances at their mother. This was the first time either of them had ever known their mother to do something that might break the rules.

"You mean you didn't ask first?" Charlotte said.

"No," Alison said. "I didn't."

"Why not?"

"This is what your father wanted. It was one of his dying wishes. What if I asked them and they said no?"

Charlotte mulled over the question, though she knew that an answer wasn't expected of her. Ben broke the silence. "Can I scatter the ashes?"

Alison looked around again: the coast was clear. "Of course you can," she said.

Chapter 5

Over the course of the next hour, Alison and her children ventured from one wooden hare to another, often crossing paths and doubling back on themselves as their fate was dictated by each roll of the dice. As they went on their way, the memories of hare hunts from years gone by flooded back to them.

They reminisced about the stories of trolls under the bridges that criss-crossed the pond—The Three Billy Goats Gruff had been one of their father's favourite stories when he was a child and he loved to read it to Charlotte and Ben. They remembered the Easter egg hunts they would take part in, following the signs around the park until it led them to the bird-watching hut where a member of park staff wearing an Easter bunny costume would give them a chocolate egg. They even broke the rules for the second time that day—running onto the grass despite the sign telling them not to—in order to scatter their father's ashes at the feet of a wooden hare on the other side of a flower bed.

For the last few hares, they had to roll the dice many times before the numbers added up correctly, but before they knew it they were left with just enough of their father's ashes to scatter at the feet of the thirteenth hare. They marched past hare number eleven and up the hill, stooping under branches swaying in the summer breeze. They reached the top and found the thirteenth hare—much larger than the others—standing majestically over Pistol Pond, looking out across the Cheshire plains.

"This is the last one," Ben said, echoing the thoughts that were already going around in Charlotte and Alison's minds.

It's time to say our final goodbyes
, Alison thought, and took the urn out of her shoulder bag for the last time. "Let's all do this together," she said.

With her daughter on the left and her son on the right, Alison guided the falling ashes around the base of the wooden hare as all three of them gripped the urn. They shook and shook until no more ashes fell. They all took a step back in a moment of quiet contemplation.

Hare Hill was the place where they had always shared happy times. No matter what was going on in their lives, they would always enjoy their visits to the park, taking part in adventures that may have seemed silly at the time but, looking back, Alison could see how they had fuelled her children's imaginations and encouraged them to believe in magic, if only for a fleeting moment. Now, looking at the wooden hares with Michael’s ashes at their feet, she knew this would always be a place of magic for her children where they could come to be with him. There was no better place anywhere in the world for her husband and their father to rest in peace.

Charlotte walked over to the wooden hare, patted it on the head, and said goodbye. Ben took his mother's hand and led her over to the hare, then they did the same. In silence, the three of them joined hands and walked back down the hill.

As they disappeared from view, a gust of warm summer wind unsettled the ashes at the feet of the thirteenth hare.

Chapter 6

When Colonel Brocklehurst, the owner of Hare Hill Hall, opened his gardens to the public, he said he wanted the visitors to the walled garden to experience "spiritual and emotional refreshment," and that was certainly something Alison had felt when she had visited the park with her husband and their children. On a sunny day, there was no better place to be. All the other local families could take their kids for an adrenaline- and sugar-fuelled trip to Blackpool or Alton Towers—her family would come here and enjoy the best-kept secret in the north west of England.

They walked past hare number twelve again and entered the walled garden, closing the squeaking metal gate behind them. They took their first steps on the grass and looked around—they were all alone. It wasn't a surprise; this was a weekday during the school term. When Alison went over the list of rules she'd broken that day, she would add "taking the kids out of school" onto the list. Her conscience was clear though—they weren't bunking off for two weeks just because a holiday to Spain happened to be a bit cheaper; they were saying goodbye to their father.

"Where shall we have our picnic?" Alison asked, and Charlotte pointed to a shady spot under a tree in the corner of the garden. They made their way across the well-manicured lawn and Alison felt the tug of her children's hands. She let them go and saw her son and daughter run across the grass together, running in circles around the flower beds and chasing each other up and down until Alison had laid out the picnic mat. She sat down just in time to catch them in her arms as they ran back to her, but the force of their arrival flung her backwards and the three of them landed in a writhing, laughing heap on the mat.

"Do you want to have lunch now or run round for a while?" Alison asked.

Charlotte and Ben sat up, looked at each other, and smiled. "Can we run around first?" Charlotte asked.

"Of course you can," Alison said, ruffling their hair. And off they went, chasing and racing each other up, down, left, and right across the lawn. Alison watched them with an air of contentment she hadn't felt in a long time. Life hadn't ended on that day two years ago, but she struggled to recall any really great family moments the three of them had shared since then. Birthdays and Christmases had been tinged with sadness and the feeling that there was an empty seat at the table. But today was different—she genuinely felt that something was changing.

She dug into the picnic bag and poured herself a plastic cup of pink lemonade. Within a matter of seconds, Charlotte and Ben had run back to the picnic mat as fast as their little legs could carry them. They grabbed their drinks and took great big gulps, replenishing the energy they had burned in the hot midday sun. Then they sat down as Alison laid out the contents of the picnic bag.

Other than the inevitable fight over the leftover chocolate brownie in a pack of four—which Alison broke in half for Charlotte and Ben to share—they enjoyed their picnic and lay back in the shade. All three of them reminisced about the times they had come to Hare Hill as a family of four, the adventures they had looking for the wooden hares, the games they played in the walled garden, and the picnics they had, just like today's.

Alison was lying on her back, with Charlotte to her left and Ben to her right, their heads resting on her stomach. Within a few minutes she heard their breathing become deeper, telling her they were enjoying a well-earned afternoon nap. She smiled and closed her eyes, and soon she too was asleep.